Old PhysX fans will certanly recognize this name – Novodex Rocket (PhysX Rocket later on). This application combines two roles: demo physics playground (with large number of  preliminarily created and configurable scenes, ability to change and visualize SDK parameters) and physics editor, which can export objects data to COLLADA or NxuStream.

PhysX Rocket was often used by Ageia to demonstrate SDK features and PPU computing capabilities in year 2005, and was included in SDK package as PhysX tool (till SDK 2.7.3.).

John Ratcliff, PhysX Rocket creator, has made a nice present recently – he revealed an updated legacy version of Rocket, which is based on latest PhysX SDK 2.8.3 and includes advanced UI options (unavailable in previous public versions), but is missing some vital demo scenes and object files. Fortunately, we were able to merge this updated Rocket with old one, from SDK 2.7.3 Tools – this means all demos like in regular Rocket, but SDK 2.8.3 solver and additional UI options from new one.

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PhysX developers may be familiar with John Ratcliff – author of NxuStream (XML file format which is used to capture state of a PhysX SDK scene), Novodex/PhysX Rocket (physics demo application and editor) and other physics related researches.

In recent days John has updated his blog, known as John Ratcliff’s Code Suppository, with new usefull PhysX tools and code snippets:

PhysX2Obj – library that allows one to export a PhysX SDK scene as either a single Wavefront OBJ file in world space or a series of OBJ files in object space. Code has been compiled and tested with PhysX SDK 2.8.3 but should work with earlier versions of the SDK with little or no modification.

Library is available for download via Google Code page.

Tool with reverse purpose – Obj2PhysX - is going to be released shortly.

NvCoreDump is a windows 32 bit DLL which allows any PhysX 2.8.3 based project to perform an NxuStream XML compatible core dump in a single function call.

Rather than including all of the NxuStream source code in your application, instead you can simply demand load this tiny DLL and save it out.  The value, purpose, and benefit is to take simply add the ability to export the contents of the current PhysX SDK in any application by simply adding this tiny code snippet and the DLL.

Project is available for download via Google Code page.

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PhysX Visual Debugger, debug and visualization tool for PhysX SDK based applications, was updated to version 1.1.9.

Main fix in this update – compability with PS3 version of PhysX SDK 2.8.3.

You can download PhysX Visual Debugger here

PhysX Visual Debugger, tool that allows you to visualize, debug, and interact with your PhysX SDK based applications, was updated to version 1.1.8. PVD supports the current PhysX SDK release (2.8.3 Version) and all previous versions.

Release notes
1. Support both left-handed and right-handed coordinate systems.
2. Fixed bug: The PVD crashes when a delete object operation is undone.
3. Fixed bug: The camera operations (Zoom to Fit, Center at the Selection, and Track the Selection) are working properly with groups of objects.
4. Fixed bug: The selection now works with cloth and soft bodies.
6. Fixed bug: Scrubbing back would sometimes fail.

You can download PhysX Visual Debugger here